Eidos Executive to Broadband Providers: You're Holding Gaming Back

An enterprise that's as enormous as the games industry needs massive broadband support that can match its constantly increasing demands for bandwidth. This was Games Workshop co-founder and Eidos executive Ian Livingstone's overture to telecom providers during the Broadband World Forum last Wednesday, in which he criticized the operators for holding back gaming. "The games industry is big…it’s the largest entertainment industry in the world," said Livingstone in a 20-minute presentation. He stressed that by 2015 the market will be worth $90 billion, and that games are in a transition from being considered a product to a service.

With more games requiring constant online connectivity, networks with low latency are becoming a necessity for a seamless experience. But that's not yet a realization, as Livingstone stresses that "we’re still having to fight bandwidth to avoid latency." Newer games also take longer to download, because their digital footprint gets larger with each new version, such as the Call of Duty series. "It’s kind of crazy that we’re fighting broadband the whole time in our industry. You’re kind of holding us back in many respects. We want to do more." Livingstone then admonished the ISPs amongst the audience that it should "plan for what you can’t predict as well as what you can," and not to rest on their laurels.